The venue is a basement nightclub – located pretty much opposite Udder Belly etc. While the seating arrangements were non-traditional – cushions on pallets, a few folding chairs and space on a banquet at the back of the room – the overall vibe was relaxed and welcoming. Supplemented by a good sound booth and stage lights (only complaint here being they could be blooming bright and for various reasons it wasn’t always possible to adjust them ahead of show time – see below for explanation).

The format of our show was essentially a two-hander (two female stand-ups) with an ever changing daily rota of male guests – hence the show title. Initially we’d planned to swap the MC-ing between Anna and myself, but quickly found that it worked better for Anna to be the MC every night.

The staff at Medina were great – welcoming, supportive and incredibly helpful. From putting up posters for us the day before the Fringe to getting rid of leftover flyers the day after, nothing was too much trouble for them and it’s impossible to think of anything more that they could have done for us.

Our numbers varied throughout the run – we had to pull one show – and while some nights were pretty busy, we never achieved a full house. Bucket takes correlated reasonably well with the numbers – we broke even within a week, but wouldn’t have done so if we’d been in the main programme.

Was not being the in main Fringe programme a mistake? Possibly – we decided to take the gamble, as it was optional this year. Numbers may have been better if we’d invested in it – certainly something for us to consider going forward.

Flyering in the area in the run up to show time was pretty hit and miss – especially on wet nights (and there were a fair few of those). Generally people in the vicinity of the venue in the hour or so before our show already had tickets for the ‘big names’ over the road. Our solution was to exit flyer any other shows we were in – this proved very effective on several occasions – or to target the Royal Mile around lunchtime. We found – as you’d expect – that talking to the people we flyered tended to work best for us – if we made them smile on the Mile we often saw them at the show that night.

The main problem we had overall was with shows before us overrunning – we never quite worked out how early in the day the problem started or whether it was a cumulative thing throughout the day, but by the time it got to us, the show before us was often still going on five mins before our start time…

As a result of this the handover was often rushed and it wasn’t always possible for our show to get plugged by the act before as they raced to wrap up and get off stage. This was probably the only complaint we had – not to major as such but quite annoying at the time as everyone ended up feeling flustered.

Overall – a great experience – brilliant venue with great staff who really got behind things and made us feel incredibly welcome. Huge – and somewhat belated – thanks to them, all our “dishes” and, of course, PBH who makes the whole thing happen.